of volition, yet to preserve in him, nay, to stimulate, those energies
which would make him the most efficient instrument of a great design.
To this end the Jesuit novitiate and the constitutions of the Order are
directed. The enthusiasm of the novice is urged to its intensest pitch;
then, in the name of religion, he is summoned to the utter abnegation of
intellect and will in favor of the Superior, in whom he is commanded to
recognize the representative of God on earth. Thus the young zealot
makes no slavish sacrifice of intellect and will; at least, so he is
taught: for he sacrifices them, not to man, but to his Maker. No limit
is set to his submission: if the Superior pronounces black to be white,
he is bound in conscience to acquiesce.

[ Those who wish to know the nature of the Jesuit virtue of obedience
will find it set forth in the famous Letter on Obedience of Loyola. ]

Loyola's book of Spiritual Exercises is well known. In these exercises
lies the hard and narrow path which is the only entrance to the Society
of Jesus. The book is, to all appearance, a dry and superstitious
formulary; but, in the hands of a skilful director of consciences,
it has proved of terrible efficacy. The novice, in solitude and darkness,
day after day and night after night, ponders its images of perdition and
despair. He is taught to hear, in imagination, the howlings of the
damned, to see their convulsive agonies, to feel the flames that burn
without consuming, to smell the corruption of the tomb and the fumes of
the infernal pit. He must picture to himself an array of adverse armies,
one commanded by Satan on the plains of Babylon, one encamped under
Christ about the walls of Jerusalem; and the perturbed mind, humbled by
long contemplation of its own vileness, is ordered to enroll itself under
one or the other banner. Then, the choice made, it is led to a region of
serenity and celestial peace, and soothed with images of divine benignity